Related papers: High Redshift Quasars and Star Formation History
High redshift quasars mark the locations where massive galaxies are rapidly being assembled and forming stars. There is growing evidence that quasar environments are metal-rich out to redshifts of at least five. The gas-phase metallicities…
In order to derive information on the star formation history in the early universe we observed 6 high-redshift (z=3.4) quasars in the near-infrared to measure the relative iron and \mgii emission strengths. A detailed comparison of the…
We examine rest-frame ultraviolet spectra of 70 high redshift quasars (z>3.5) to study the chemical enrichment history of the gas closely related to the quasars, and thereby estimate the epoch of first star formation. The fluxes of several…
Quasars at large redshifts provide a powerful probe of structure formation in the early universe. Several arguments suggest that the formation of ellipticals and massive bulges may have involved an early quasar phase. At very large…
I review recent progress in understanding the formation of the first stars and quasars. The initial conditions for their emergence are given by the now firmly established model of cosmological structure formation. Numerical simulations of…
I review recent observations on the evolution of quasars, describe new surveys for quasars at z > 5 and for quasars at z > 3.3 down to luminosities corresponding to L* galaxies, and note the possible connection between the evolution of the…
Observations of the high redshift Universe, interpreted in the context of a new generation of computer simulated model Universes, are providing new insights into the processes by which galaxies and quasars form and evolve, as well as the…
There are at least three reasons for being interested in galaxies at high redshifts that formed most of their stars quite quickly early in the history of the Universe: (1) the ages of their stellar populations can potentially place…
The formation of the first stars and quasars marks the transformation of the universe from its smooth initial state to its clumpy current state. In popular cosmological models, the first sources of light began to form at redshift 30 and…
In popular cold dark matter cosmological scenarios, stars may have first appeared in significant numbers around a redshift of 10 or so, as the gas within protogalactic halos with virial temperatures in excess of 20,000 K (corresponding to…
The formation of the first stars and quasars marks the transition between the smooth initial state and the clumpy current state of the Universe. In popular CDM cosmologies, the first sources of light started to form at a redshift z=30 and…
The transition between the nearly smooth initial state of the Universe and its clumpy state today occurred during the epoch when the first stars and low-luminosity quasars formed. For Cold Dark Matter cosmologies, the radiation produced by…
There is a growing consensus that the emergence of quasars at high redshifts is related to the onset of galaxy formation, suggesting that the detection of concentrations of gas accompanying such quasars should provide clues about the early…
I discuss two programs to study radio-loud quasars at high (z>4) redshift. Quasars are the most luminous, non-transient objects known and are observed to the earliest cosmic epochs. At lower redshifts, radio-loud quasars are associated with…
We present results of the analysis of near infrared spectroscopic observations of 6 high-redshift quasars (z > 4), emphasizing the measurement of the ultraviolet FeII/MgII emission line strength in order to estimate the beginning of intense…
Quasars, as the most luminous persistent sources in the Universe, have broad applications for cosmological studies. In particular, they can be employed to directly measure the expansion history of the Universe, similarly to SNe Ia. The…
We review observable signatures of the first generation of stars and low-luminosity quasars, including the metal enrichment, radiation background, and dust opacity/emission that they produce. We compute the formation history of collapsed…
The existence of massive ($10^{11}$ solar masses) elliptical galaxies by redshift z~4 (when the Universe was 1.5 billion years old) necessitates the presence of galaxies with star-formation rates exceeding 100 solar masses per year at z>6…
The Universe became fully reionized, and observable optically, at a time corresponding to redshift z~6.5, so it is only by studying the HI and molecular absorption lines against higher-redshift, radio-loud sources that one can hope to make…
Large telescopes have allowed astronomers to observe galaxies that formed as early as 850 million years after the Big Bang. We predict when the first star that astronomers can observe formed in the universe, accounting for the first time…